


We Are Our Own Downfalls

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grieving, caring Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 16:21:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14109285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: Pepper starts crying.She doesn't intend to, but she was tired, so tired, and last night had been a bad one, and then Tony snapped at her when she was expecting it, the only time he's ever raised his voice to her, and she just broke down into tears and left the room, leaving him to chase after her like a kicked puppy."It's not you,"  She said, waving her hand at him.  "Promise."





	We Are Our Own Downfalls

Pepper starts crying.

It's the most humiliating reaction to having Tony yell at her, but here she is, bent over her desk, hands splayed flat on top of the folders and tears slipping off her face to fall onto very important papers.   She digs her fingers into the wood of the desk and stomps her foot on the ground, anything to shock herself out of this, to make her shoulders stop shaking and force herself to actually use her words instead of crying like a baby, but no dice.  She's officially become the type of girl to have a mental break down at work.

"Pep."  Tony reached for her, then must have remembered their talk about boundaries and realized that it might not have been welcome.  "Pep, don't do that, I'm sorry."

He felt awful, because he always feels awful when someone around him is upset, whether it's his fault or not.  And the thing is, there's been very few times where it's actually his fault, mostly he just picks up on the mood ringing through the room the way a wire can conduct electricity, and suddenly he takes every bit of anger and anxiety on his own shoulders.  She can only imagine the instant panic that comes from snapping at an employee and having her burst into tears.

"It's not you."  She chokes out a laugh and then wipes away her tears, trying to put herself back together.  Normally, she wouldn't have let anyone see her like this, let alone her boss, but this was _Tony._ She'd seen him at his worst, when he was drunk, when he was tired, when he was emerging from a week long drinking binge.  He could deal with watching her recover from her momentary loss in sanity.  "This has nothing to do with you."

It really didn't, even though that was the sort of thing people always say when someone makes them cry.  It's just that Pepper is tired, and she had a bad night, and this is the first time that Tony had even raised his voice at her, so she just hadn't been expecting it.  Pepper's not even sure there was a reason for it, just that she happened to catch him at a bad time ( _she'd find out later that Alice had broken up with him and would feel terrible all over again_ ), so when he turned around and yelled at her to just leave him alone, she sort of panicked, and excused herself from the room.

He had chased after her to her makeshift office, and that's when he found her trying not to cry.  Tony had tried to make it better, which is when she started full on sobbing.

Like she said: humiliating.

"You really need to give me an actual office."  She was trying to make them both move past this, but he was still staring at her, trying to make it better.  Pepper decided to ignore that, turning away from him and shaking out her hair, restarting the braid that she had worn to work today.  It's what she always does when she's upset- fix the hair, fix the make up, fix the coffee.  "Someplace with a door."

 _Someplace I can hide,_ she was saying, but she knew that was Tony heard was  _someplace I can get away from you._

"I shouldn't have yelled at you."  He was babbling, still reaching out for her and then backing away.  She's never seen him become so guilty so fast, and was half wondering what size muffin basket would be at her doorstep tomorrow.  "That was uncalled for, you did nothing wrong, I promise, you're an A level assistant and I had no right."

"It really didn't have anything to do with you."  She couldn't fix her make up with him in the room, so she swept past him into the kitchen, using the microwave as a mirror.  He follows.  "I promise, Tony."

"Then what?"

She doesn't want to tell him.  She hasn't told anybody about the phone call last night, because that would make it real, but it is real, and logically she knows it, so she might as well rip the band aid off.  She would have to take time off next week anyways, he was going to find out eventually.  At the very least it would make him feel better to hear it now.

"I got a phone call last night."  She is stuffing things back in her purse so she doesn't have to look at him, feeling better when everything was back in its correct pocket, and then went to start the coffee.  Hair good, make up impeccable, and coffee means its over.  Back to business.  "My grandmother died."

She's facing away from him, but she can still hear his sharp intake of breath, can feel the light pressure on her shoulder that meant he had reached out to touch her.  Pepper leans back into him, and suddenly he's there, holding her as she cries, and this time it is not embarrassing.  It's needed.

"I'm gonna need some time off."  She tells him when she finishes, and even though there's not really a point to do so, she starts her whole routine all over again.  Hair first, then make up, and then its over.  "Just a few days this weekend, long enough for the...."  She does not want to say funeral.   She doesn't want to talk about any of that.  

"Of course."  He steps back away from her, tapping on his phone, and she knows that he's already taking care of it, schedules being rearranged and jobs reassigned.  He's very efficient when he puts his mind to it.  "Take the week."

The week was longer than she needed.  Longer than she wanted, but maybe it's what she would have to take, because going home didn't just mean going to the funeral.  It meant taking care of her mother, talking to her sister for the first time in months, cleaning out her grandmother's house.  Working through things that she had ran away from in exchange for the promise of a career.

(She could almost hear the reactions now, when they find out she left home just to become a glorified secretary for Tony Stark.)

"But you need me."  She turns to face him for the first time, never mind the tears and the red eyes and the fact that she probably needs to go take a shower before she's back to normal.  

"So does your family."

Pepper knows that, but she also knows that without her, Tony will be left to the mercy of Stane and his demands, and she'll come back to find him worse than she had left him.  "You're my family, too."

He's still got his hand on her arm, and he closes his eyes as if the sentence pained him.  "Go home, Pep."  His hand tightens, like he doesn't want to let go, but then he steps away.  "You've done enough for today."

 

 

 

When she gets home, she finds a text from Happy.

_Mr. Stark told me about your grandmother.  I'm really sorry._

A second, rapid fire.

_The private jet is at your disposal.  I'll be at your apartment to pick you up whenever you're ready._

A third.

_Don't argue with it.  It'll be easier on everyone involved if you just accept his help.  Trust me, I've been there._

Pepper throws her phone away, walks around the apartment a few times, because this is not what she wanted, and then she starts to pack.

 

 

Going home is just as shitty as she thought it would be.

Her sister is angry.  Her mother is crying all the time.  Her father made the comment about her being a secretary, just like she knew he would, and Pepper didn't have the energy to explain to him what she actually did.

And her grandmother's dead. 

That parts pretty shitty, too.

"She loved you."  It should have been nice, but in her sisters mouth the words sounded harsh.  They grated over her, taking away the skin, scraping down to the bone.  "You left, and I stayed, but you were always the favorite."

Pepper doesn't answer.  She won't rise to the bait here, above the casket, even though she wants to tell her how wrong that sentence was.  She could have said that her sister tried to leave and couldn't cut it, that she doesn't see how her failure is Pepper's fault, but she knew her grandmother would hate it if they stood here fighting the whole night.

"She loved you, too."  Pepper knew she had to be here, for her family because she's the responsible one, and for her grandmother because she owes it to her, but she wants to be with Tony, back in his kitchen with his arms around her.  During this whole disaster, it was the only thing that had actually helped.  "It wasn't a contest."

"She loved everyone."  Her sister said, and this time the words really were harsh, like glass in her mouth.  She wondered if they hurt her to say as much as they hurt Pepper to hear.  "That doesn't make me special."

 

 

 

Once, back when she was little, Pepper's dog died.  

It was on Halloween, she remembered, because she just got out of school, and her father was picking her up because it was his day off, and he grabbed her by the shoulders and told her what happened, right there with all the kids crushing in around them and her tiny bag of candy swinging from her fist.  He took her home, and let her look at him, her dog that is not really her dog anymore, and then she just took off running and didn't stop, not even when all the trick-or-treaters started filling up the sidewalk.  And her parents just let her go.

Pepper would have thought that she had grown a lot since then, but it seems that her coping mechanisms are still the same.  There is no amount of hair and make up and coffee that could fix this, so she changes into sweat pants and tennis shoes and takes off down that jogging path that she and her best friend would run in high school, up the hill and through the woods and winding through neighborhoods that haven't changed.

The people haven't changed either.

She can still see them, and even though they recognize her, they don't wave at her.  Pepper wonders if they feel bad for her, seeing as she came home for a funeral, or if they were all still talking about the little high school sweet heart who ran away to the city, who thought she was too big for her britches and tried to forget where she came from.

 _That's not what I was doing._ She wanted to scream at all of them.   _Don't you get that I wasn't supposed to be here?  It would have ruined me._

But she doesn't say anything to them, just keeps going, feet pounding on the pavement in time with her breathing until she got home, and she collapsed down on the front lawn, lungs burning and tears blurring in her eyes.  

 

 

 

Pepper goes back to work a full two days earlier than Tony was expecting her.

(Not that it was a surprise, because the jet flew her home and Happy helped her lug a box of her grandmother's things up to her apartment, and she told him to warn Tony that she might drop in early.)

He's still surprised.

"Hey."  He wasn't wearing a shirt, which means that he really didn't think she was going to come in.  He almost always tries to wear clothes when she's here, after one memorable incident that both of them swore not to talk about.  "How are you?"

"Exhausted."  She had his folders and she had his coffee, just like always, but she didn't make any move to give it to him.  "This weekend was pretty shitty, actually."

Tony winced, then made that little hand motion again, like he wanted to hug her and knew that he couldn't.   "Can I do anything?"  He actually takes the coffee and folders from her, even if it takes him three tries to do it.  "Anything at all?"

"Don't make me go home."  She sank down into the chair, even though it was in the middle of the workshop and she normally doesn't stay down here.  Everything else Tony would have given to a stranger at the drop of a hat, but the workshop was his and his alone.  It was a privilege to even look into it.  "Just give me work to do."

Tony looks at her, sighs, and then flips through the papers to get to the line he has to sign.

"You can eat dinner with me?  Tell me how I did?"  She wasn't hungry.  He knew that.  "As part of your job, of course."

He would not be giving her real work, not today or tomorrow or even the next.  There would be demands to go on drives with him, and to eat with him in order to make sure he was eating, or to finish his coffee because he doesn't want to waste it.  But there would be no work, because he was considerate and sweet and knew what she needed, somehow.

Pepper smiled, but as she moved past him, he reached out and grabbed her on the shoulder.  "You're going to be okay, you know?"

Pepper knew, but it was nice to have someone remind her.  She covered his hand with her own and they stayed there for a moment, looking at each other.  "I know."

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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